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ASSOCIATED PRESS Raghib Ismail celebrates after catching a 42-yard pass against Air Force on Oct. 15, 1999 in South Bend, Indiana. Ismail had 172 yards on six catches to help lead Notre Dame past Air Force, 57-27.

Last thing I ever thought I’d need to do as a sports writer is pen a column reminding people how great a college football player Raghib Ismail was back in the day. Yet here I am, starting off 2017 wondering how so many seem to have forgotten the impact the speedster from Meyers High School in Wilkes-Barre had on the game for three seasons when Notre Dame was just about the biggest thing going in sports.

Once again, the Rocket fell short of induction into the College Football Hall of Fame, a laughable sidebar to the National Football Foundation’s announcement earlier this week that 10 players and three coaches will be enshrined into the prestigious Hall on Dec. 5.

Tennessee’s Peyton Manning is one of the players. So are USC’s Matt Leinart and San Diego State’s Marshall Faulk. These are players, I’d argue, who had the same impact on the college game the Rocket did. Explosive, game-changing players who helped their teams to the national-championship level of performance.

Some of the other inductees — guys like Texas A&M LB Dat Nguyen, New Mexico LB Brian Urlacher, and Michigan State WR Kirk Gibson, all of whom went on to professional notoriety — did not have Ismail’s impact, great as they were. Anyone who watched Notre Dame closely back in the late 1980s knows that much.

Ismail played on the same team as two great college quarterbacks (Tony Rice and Rick Mirer), some wonderful running backs (Ricky Watters, Rodney Culver and Jerome Bettis) and one of the nation’s top collegiate tight ends at the time (Derek Brown). But he always drew the attention of the opposing coaching staffs as the most dangerous player Notre Dame had.

Therein lied his greatness. By definition, he was a barely 6-foot tall wide receiver playing in an option offense, with a true option quarterback and world-class, true running backs. Yet, denying Ismail the football became a weekly talking point for any coach who played Notre Dame.

And they never seemed to be able to do it in the biggest moments, either. He caught a 29-yard touchdown pass when Notre Dame beat West Virginia in the Fiesta Bowl to secure the 1989 national title. He rushed for 106 yards and scored on a scintillating 35-yard reverse in the 1990 Orange Bowl that denied Colorado a national title. He had 57 receiving yards in the 1991 Orange Bowl against the Buffaloes, and he was a clipping penalty away from winning that game with a pretty 91-yard punt return for a score in the closing minutes.

The man beat teams so many different ways, with so many different special skills. Only two players have ever rushed for 1,000 yards and piled up 1,000 receiving yards in their careers at Notre Dame, and he’s one of them. He scored five times on kick and punt returns alone.

Arguing he was a player impactful enough, successful enough, meaningful enough to be a Hall of Famer doesn’t seem that difficult a chore.

So, why did more voters this year find Mike Ruth and Adrian Peterson (the one who played at Georgia Southern, not the one who won the Heisman Trophy at Oklahoma) more worthy of induction?

Would you believe it’s statistics?

Difficult to believe, for sure, because we’re talking about a guy who averaged 22 yards every time he caught a pass, and almost eight every time he took a handoff or pitch, and nearly 23 every time someone dared give him a chance to return a kickoff or punt. Ismail has had the misfortune of being a dominant statistical player in his era, but a candidate for the Hall of Fame after the proliferation of spread offenses.

We’re talking about a guy who had 4,187 all-purpose yards in his three-year career with the Irish, at a time when only the elite approached a number like that. But today’s voters love two things: Labels, and numbers that are easy to understand.

A vote for Ismail is a vote for a guy who had 1,015 rushing yards in his career. Sixty six players in the Football Bowl Subdivision — including two who played for San Diego State — topped that in 2016 alone.

A vote for Ismail is also a vote for a guy who had 1,565 receiving yards in his career, a total four players bettered in 2016.

A vote for Ismail, again, is a vote for a guy who scored just 14 touchdowns in his college career, and 46 players had more than that in 2016, too.

That’s all well understood, of course. But Hall of Fame voters, in more sports than just college football, struggle with balancing eras, the nuance that comes with judging numbers posted in the 1980s against the numbers they see today.

Understand, in the 20 seasons before Ismail came along, only three receivers – Tom Gatewood in 1970, Ken MacAfee in 1977 and Tim Brown in 1986-87 — bettered Ismail’s 1990 season as a receiver across the board, when he caught 32 passes for 699 yards and two touchdowns. And in the 11 seasons after Ismail left South Bend, only two more players did it — Tony Smith in 1991 and Derrick Mayes in 1994-95. And none of those players sniffed Ismail’s rushing numbers during their careers.

Of course, since 2002, when pass-first, spread offenses became the rage around college football, 11 Notre Dame players had better receiving seasons than the best season Ismail posted. Michael Floyd bettered it four times. Golden Tate came within 70 yards of outperforming Ismail’s career receiving totals in 2009 alone.

But voters have to understand that numbers alone don’t make Rhema McKnight or Davaris Daniels or Equanimeous St. Brown a better Hall of Fame candidate than Rocket Ismail. It’s ludicrous to even write that. Anyone who watches the games would know.

Yet, one of the most versatile offensive players on a historic team, one of the most dangerous special teamers of his era, is a risky proposition to some voters because he can’t be compared favorably in a statistical sense to other running backs or receivers on the ballot?

It makes no sense. As long as this continues to be the case, one of the most unique players in college football history won’t grace its Hall of Fame. That leaves a noticeable void in a place devoted to greatness, an empty chasm where Raghib Ismail clearly belongs.

DONNIE COLLINS is a sports columnist for The Times-Tribune. Contact him at dcollins@timesshamrock.com and follow him on Twitter @DonnieCollinsTT

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